UK weather

People across the country have been helping friends, neighbours and strangers get to work and school. Alex Thomson talks to some of the ordinary volunteers who have braved the extraordinary conditions to lend a hand.

From the snow-bound Jaguar to people live tweeting their nightmare journeys – images of the great freeze have been flooding social media for the last few days. Ed Howker has been looking through some of the best.

Whenever the temperature falls below freezing, local authorities have a duty to provide emergency shelter to rough sleepers. Mosques, drive-through restaurants and even a football stadium all opened their doors to provide refuge this week, but at least two people lost their lives sleeping outside in sub zero conditions. Paul McNamara reports.

The chaos brought by the snow and stormy conditions is still causing widespread disruption as transport services and other businesses struggle to recover. All the disruption is costing the British economy an estimated £900 million a day. Siobhan Kennedy reports.

Southern Europe is still sweltering in the grip of a heatwave, which has sparked wildfires in the south of France and Corsica, near popular tourist spots along the Cote d’Azur. Thousands of firefighters have also been battling blazes in Portugal, while Italy’s drought is so severe that the Pope has shut down the Vatican’s historic…

Britain’s first Weather Man was mercilessly ribbed when he got it wrong. Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy declared: “General weather probable during the next two days” in his first weather forecast – which was printed in The Times on August 1, 1861. 150 years on, what’s changed? FactCheck turns Weather Girl.